Penumbra
by Beloved-Stranger
Summary: As the initial shock fades and his eyes adjust, he can see that it's still there on his chest in black ink, but that it looks backlit, like someone has lit a stripe of magnesium under his skin. He can just make out the mapping of vein under there, glowing in tones of vermillion and garnet where the light bleeds into them... (written for quickreaver's fuckyeahSamMoL pic on LJ)
1. part one

**Players:** Sam, Dean, Charlie, Kevin, a few surprises along the way, brief mention of an oddly named cat.

**Words:** I think I got up to 3, 500

**Rating:** uh, pretty PG

**Warning:** here be potty mouths and resurrection

**AN:** Alright, so, quickreaver posted this picture over on LJ and said WRITE THINGS and I was powerless to resist, which doesn't happen often, but it got a little out of hand and uh. Yeah. This is part one of the resulting madness. Also, this is pretty much hot off the press, I may go back and expand it later, pretty sure I missed some stuff…

**I Blame:** quickreaver and kettle_o_fish for this whole thing. Just like, _all of it._

* * *

**penumbra  
****part one**

"You don't have to do this, Sam."

It's been a persistent mantra for the past two months and up until now, he hasn't bothered to answer it.

The altar before him gleams wetly under the moonlight, as though already covered in sacrificial blood, and though he knows it's just an illusion, a temporary construct made by the goddess who stands upon its black marble steps, the sight of it still sends a thrill of precognitive adrenaline through him. Either side of the steps are bronze stags tarnished so dark they too appear black, their branching antlers threatening to scrape holes in the thick night air. At the top is a wooden table with a bronze bowl and a stack of silver arrows beside their matching bow. There's the scent of new pennies on the barely-there breeze, still hot and cloying, an unspoken threat, rising like steam from the fresh deer heart that sits in the bowl, red and wet and obscene.

"Sam –"

"Yes, I do," he says, turning abruptly to his brother. "I'm the one who… _Yes, I do_."

He turns back to the goddess, and Artemis smiles her small, brittle smile at him. She's different from the last time they saw her – wearing a dress of black sackcloth instead of the hunting leathers and wielding a quieter bearing that the remembered deadly bravado. Sam doesn't know which man she mourns for, her father or her lover, or both, but she came when he called and listened when he spoke and hasn't tried to kill them. Yet.

"Do it," he tells her. "Whatever you have to do…do it."

She lifts her hand to his face…

"SAM!"

And when her fingertips touch his eyelids, the world spirals into a white haze.

**oOoOoOo**

He can hear _everything_ – it reminds him uncomfortably of those last fevered days filled with demon blood; the hypersensitivity, the closeness of his own harsh breathing, the intensity of fucking everything…

"…Sam?"

And there's Dean, nearby, but he already knew that; sensed him, moments ago, as be began to come 'round. He hears his brother drop into the chair by Sam's bed.

"Sam, hey, you in there?" He sounds so wary…

Somewhere, not as close as Dean, in the next room it sounds like, there are the half-familiar noises of a small child playing. Sam can hear the rhythmic thud of determined little feet as she bounces and runs, the occasional burst of a small piping voice accompanied by Charlie's upbeat chatter and the rattling and clinking of toys.

"It worked," his breathes. Some knot inside him, one he didn't even know he had, releases suddenly and the force of it takes his breath away. He's glad to be lying down already, feeling all will to move drain out of him as that emotional exhaustion catches him. He's felt like this before, so many times, but welcomes it; after the exhaustion fades there will come relief.

"Yeah," Dean says, and there is surprising bitterness there. "Yeah, it worked alright. Just not the way you planned."

"She's here, she's alive. It worked."

"She's _a year old_."

Sam closes his eyes – it's not like there's any point keeping them open – and thinks, and the more he thinks about it, the more it makes sense.

"If she'd been human…"

"Yeah, I figured." His brother lets out a deep sigh, and Sam knows the look that will be on his face, the aftermath of helpless anger, of anguish and all that thwarted protectiveness. "Just over a year. Fifteen months now. Got all her teeth, and walking and talking and just climbing all over me like nothing bad ever happened and she never…"

_Got shot in the chest by her uncle._

Sam turns his face towards his brother.

"It's good," he says quietly, "that she doesn't remember."

"What if she does? Later, I mean; what if the memories filter back when she grows up?"

"Then we'll – then I'll deal with it." Sam swallows and turns his face back to the ceiling. It occurs to him that she may remember now, but hasn't shown any sign of it since she hasn't seen him yet.

Dean sighs again, and Sam knows this is where the really bad news comes in.

"Sam…"

"Just say it."

"Look, Artemis said it isn't permanent, it's just – there had to be a sacrifice and she -"

"She sacrificed my eyes."

"No, no man, she…did something to them." There's a pause and Sam knows that Dean is struggling to find a way to explain their – _his_ – new predicament. "She said they're… okay, I know this sounds bad but…"

"Christ, Dean, just spit it out," Sam snaps.

"They're not human eyes anymore," Dean blurts, a little angrily. "And the only reason you're blind right now is that you have to learn how to use them. That's what she said, before she vanished. Again."

Sam feels like his chest is compressing. _Not human eyes_. It's not as bad as it could be – and he knows, he's been there, it could be so much worse – but _not human_ seems to echo in his skull like a bell ringing down through the years to find him again.

He hears that bright, piping laugh in the next room and closes his new eyes again.

**oOoOoOo**

His first lesson comes a week later, when he's finally memorized the route from his room to the main bathroom and is stripping for a shower. He pulls his shirt over his head, hip against the sink for balance because sometimes that lack of visual orientation still catches him unawares, and there's a blast of light in the darkness.

Sam barely catches himself on the sink, one knuckle popping with the sudden strain, and then he feels lightheaded and has to lock his knees to keep from hitting the tiles; there in front of him, bobbing with his movements, is a star.

He blinks frantically, and seconds later recognizes the shape of it – _it's his anti-possession tattoo_.

As the initial shock fades and his eyes adjust, he can see that it's still there on his chest in black ink, but that it looks backlit, like someone has lit a stripe of magnesium under his skin. He can just make out the mapping of vein under there, glowing in tones of vermillion and garnet where the light bleeds into them.

He doesn't think twice.

"DEAN!"

"Where's the fire?" Dean says when he arrives in the room in a whirlwind of thumping boots and the smell of tomato sauce and baby shampoo. He's been getting Emma ready for bed.

"I can see it."

He hears the sharp drawn breath. "See what?"

"My tattoo. It's glowing."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

He hears the rasp of stubble; Dean rubbing a hand over his face. "What's this mean?"

"Don't know. Either I can see tattoos or…supernatural symbols, maybe?"

"Or just supernatural tattoos."

Sam aims a look at him and Dean immediately barks back, "what? It could be a thing."

"Take your shirt off."

"…excuse me?"

"Shirt off, so I can see if I can…see your one too."

There's some muttering, the rustle of fabric and then a second blast of light. Sam blinks and yes, there, Dean's tattoo hoving into view.

Sam takes a deep breath and grips the sink again, trying to centre himself. It's the first time he's seen anything in seven whole days and… it's a lot.

Distantly he registers more rustling and then Dean's hand on his shoulder. "Sam."

"I'm good."

"My ass. You saw my tat?"

"Yeah, I just can't figure out why it's taken me so long to see my own, or any of the other magical crap there must be stored around here."

"I dunno…your brain adjusting, making new neural connections? I mean it's not like you're dealing with the standard equipment anymore, maybe it's taken this long for your brain to read the manual."

It sounds plausible, but Sam's worried that it's not his physical brain that's been the hold up, but the other part.

"_You're eyes went black…?"_

He doesn't want to go there again. But right now it looks like he doesn't have a choice.

**oOoOoOo**

Magic.

His new eyes let him see magic. And the supernatural, and the paranormal, and the super- and sub-human, celestial, demonic…

Just not in a way that's really helpful.

He sees them the way he saw his tattoo; in a nimbus of light in a variety of pale colours, or in the case of the demonic, a morass of charcoal vapours like dirty cobwebs. Ghosts and spirits stream afterimages of themselves as they move, while pagan gods move in a wake of lurid mist. Angels are almost painful to look at, so bright they blot out stars and gently illuminate beings around them with reflected glow. The first time Cas pops in to check on them Sam spends the next two hours blinking green spots from his vision.

The one disappointment is that he can't see Emma. After all that's happened, he doesn't get to see the fruits of his labours. The only visual clue he has to her presence is the afterimage of Dean's bronze pendant that sits like a brassy reverse silhouette between her collarbones (Sam's not the only one who made sacrifices).

She's completely human.

Emma is bothered not at all by his limitations and learns quickly how to get his attention and interact with him. She puts her toys in his hand instead of waving them at him and sits quietly against his chest while he struggles through a nursery rhyme book in braille instead of interrupting and pointing at things or squirming. Sam learns the smell of baby shampoo and apple sauce and peanut butter that means 'Emma', and can track the sound of her little piping voice twice the distance that Dean or Charlie can.

He can do these things, but.

He can't hunt.

They tried, once, and never ever, ever again. Sam has enough scars already and he's not fond of the new ones on both his kneecaps, thanks. It's crippling though, not an exaggeration, like something has been physically cut out of him, like Artemis really had used the silver knife at her belt and carved out his true eyes, and taken part of his heart and his hands and his strength and spilled them down the steps of her altar.

He wants a purpose, _he wants his old one back_, but really, anything other than stumbling through the base and 'helping' whenever Emma needs a story read or Dean needs an object from the repository to be identified or Charlie wants a guinea pig for some terrifying new recipe…

And this is when the dreams start again.

**oOoOoOo**

"I don't get it," says Dean.

"I keep dreaming about Adam and pulling him out of the Cage," Sam says again.

"No, I get that part," Dean says, and Sam knows he's narrowing his eyes suspiciously and making the face that means 'don't be a smartass Sam, it's not cute'. "What I wanna know is why. First Emma and now Adam? Why?"

"Guilt?" Sam suggest wearily, which isn't untrue – the fact that they never managed to find a way to retrieve Adam has dogged him over the years just as hard as the demon blood days.

"Maybe," Dean allows, "but then why not others? I mean, why not Jo and Ellen, and Ash and hell, Rufus, Pam, Pastor Jim, Caleb, mom and dad… the list goes on. Why Adam? Why now?"

"Search me," Sam says, rubbing a hand over his face and peering tiredly around the repository. Points of light leapt out at him like emerging stars in a myriad of kaleidoscope colours. A line of prayer wheels became a constellation of silver and blue, a cursed knife was a slash of malevolent indigo and Sam knew the rippling galaxy of red and gold and green was their family tree, spilling down and down the tallest wall and perpetually re-writing itself whenever there was a hint of change to their own small family.

Family…

Family.

"Crap," says Sam.

**oOoOoOo**

_The air is hot, almost unbearably, and it catches in the back of his throat, reeking of sulphur and brimstone and burning flesh._

_He's in Hell again, at the very bottom of the Pit._

_Below his bare feet lies the door to the Cage; a plain of red rock and earth, discoloured by the rains of blood and viscera that fall from Hell and scorched from the firestorms that rage through the endless night._

_Same looks up at the pile of tumble red stone before him, spearing into the fraught blackness overhead and spies a single point of white._

_Angel glow spills like phosphor from a hole in the mountain's centre and Sam feels the urge to go to it, to bask in that one clean spot amongst the filth. He starts climbing, hand over hand, bare feet bloodied by the red stone until he leaves a trail of deeper red behind him, glistening the lights of the unholy fires._

_Finally he crouches over the hole, barely two foot wide, and filled from edge to edge with that depthless, beating light…_

_A human hand erupts from the glow and knots itself in the front of his shirt._

"And then I wake up," Sam says.

"So, we're fucked then," Dean says.

"Not necessarily," Kevin says from under a pile of parchment.

Dean eyes the prophet with one of those suspicious looks that's becoming regular. Sam can tell from the tone that follows:

"Meaning?"

"I'm kinda surprised you guys haven't figured it out before," Kevin replies, emerging with a shower of sound like shifting autumn leaves. "I mean, Hell's sealed from _evil_ yeah, but there's ways around that."

"Uh, what?" He's got to be kidding. After all the crap they went through to slam the damn gates SHUT?!

"Are you fucking serious?" Dean barks.

There's a pause and Sam watches as the smouldering effigy that is Kevin Tran blinks at them. "It's not like it dangerous," he says. "I mean c'mon we're talking about –"

"I don't wanna hear it!" Dean overrides him. "There will be no cracking open of Hell by ANYONE."

**oOoOoOo**

There's a clunk from the table in front of them.

Dean and Kevin sit back and look from the length of smoky pearl alicorn lying across their books up to the shaggy, bad-tempered man standing over them.

"My head's on fire," Sam grinds out from behind three days' worth of beard, "I can't sleep without having that fucking dream, and this thing blinds me – REALLY blinds me – every time I go into the repository."

He glares at them and later Dean will swear he saw hellfire winking in his brother's pupils as that merciless gaze found him.

"You are going to crack open the Cage," Sam snarls, "and you're going to do it with this."

**oOoOoOo**

"Here? You sure?"

Dean miserably eyes the wreaked buildings around them. Nothing good grows here, or ever will, and no people will ever come to reclaim this town and try to make it home again.

_It's just as well_, he thinks.

Sam is looking around himself like he wants to weep, break things with his bare hands and throw up all at the same time.

"Yeah," he says, hushed like he's in a church, or afraid of being heard, "yeah this is the place."

Kevin looks pretty typically nervous and a little pissed they dragged him along, but it was either this or diaper duty, so he'd left Charlie to is and come with them. Now he cracks open his note book, flicking through dog-eared pages and skim reading pages cascading with ancient languages and symbols that give Sam headaches to look at too long.

"The alicorn should act as a divining rod," he tells Dean. "Just hold the widest part with both hands and, uh, wait."

"Great," Dean says, but does as he's told.

The reaction is instantaneous.

Sam makes a sound like he's being either loved up or stabbed, hard to tell, and goes to his knees, swaying faintly. The alicorn quivers and draws Dean forward. Dean lets it, only baulking when…

"No," he said, low at first but then louder as they get closer and closer to that one tumbled building. "NO, DON'T!"

The alicorn won't be denied. It's almost singing in his hands, its smooth spiralled sides hot as blood against his palms.

It draws him to the very spot, and plunges downwards.

For a moment the world is eerily silent, totally still…

And then everything explodes with white.

**oOoOoOo**

You'd think, what with being so enormous, that there would be somewhere in the base where Sam could smoke in peace. Somewhere indoors, by one of the fireplaces, with a glass of brandy and maybe a dish of pecans and an armchair so that he could read and have Purlorus Jack on his lap, purring away like a rusty chainsaw.

But there isn't.

Dean is a Parent now, and whenever Sam lights up, in spite of protests that it's not actually tobacco filled with deadly carcinogens, just herbs that help with his dreams and his headaches and the sight – _and look, Dean it's not like I'd ever use the ones with the medicinal marijuana around her_ – Dean will make that face that screams, NOT AROUND MY CHILD SAMUEL DAVIS WINCHESTER GET THEE HENCE so hard that Sam can _feel_ the force of Dean's disapproval.

And so Sam takes his smoking kit and the coveted dead-man-robe and goes up to the observatory to smoke and freeze and blow spiteful, lonely smoke rings.

Only this time he's not alone.

Jo is there, glowing like a second moon, pale and smooth and deceptively serene. She sits on the stone ledge of the observatory balcony, the alicorn across her lap spinning rainbow patterns across her borrowed jeans and blouse and the fall of her corn-silk hair. Sam can see her picked out in glorious, prismic detail, like a figure spun entirely out of silver and pearl, so beautiful and pure it's a little heart-breaking.

"Those smell disgusting," Jo says, turning her dark gold eyes on him. "What the hell is that?"

And the spell is broken.

It's such a relief – unicorn she maybe, but she's still the same obnoxious smartass. Sam grins at her and lights up, cupping the flame against the breeze and then blowing grey shapes at her. Sometimes he sees images in the smoke, feathers and swords and running wolves, and once a crow carrying a leaf in its beak.

Jo watches a skull drift past and blows a cloud of frosty air at it, layering it with silver and blue sparks. She smirks at Sam, and then turns her gaze back to the stars. Sam gets through one cigarette and draws one leg up onto the ledge beside her, rolling a second on the inside of his thigh.

"You ready for tomorrow?"

Jo turns those luminous eyes on him.

"I know what I have to do," she says peaceably. "I'm going to do it." A soft sigh. "I don't think I could stop if I wanted too…"

Sam feels a pang. He remembers talking to her, the night before she died, about how she was planning on quitting the field after the apocalypse of thwarted, on going back to her nursing degree and specializing in haematology. She loved hunting, but hunting wasn't what would make her dad proud and wasn't what made her feel good; helping people did.

_You can't be a nurse when you're dead_, Sam thinks, _but you can't do it when you glow in the dark and leave trails of flowers and stardust wherever you walk_.

You can help people though. Sam thinks that's maybe half the reason that Jo forgives them for pulling her down out of Heaven. He's still figuring the other half out, but has a good idea; Dean watches her sometimes like she's a wish come true, in between the times when he isn't watching her and oozing guilt and guilty want.

"We'll be there, you know," Sam says, carefully exhaling smoke. A drift of ashy white horses sweep away from him and down the slope of the roof. "You were never going to do this alone."

Jo smiles some secret smile and says, "I know. I'm not afraid."

Then she leans over and clasps his forearm with one surprisingly strong hand.

"SONUVABITCH!" Sam howls as cold lightning lances up his median nerve. "Jo, what the actual…fuck."

Under her palm a peacock feather blooms across his skin, unfurling like a flower in a time-lapse shot.

"What's this for?"

"Luck," says Jo. "The others already have theirs. Charlie wanted me to put hers on her ass, but Dean told her no."

Sam huffs a laugh, gazing at the new tattoo as it shines out at him from the perpetual dark. "Why?"

"He said she wasn't allowed to copy him," Jo says serenely.

Sam chokes on the next drag.

**END OF PART ONE  
**

**WILL WRITE PART TWO SOONISH**


	2. interlude: the things unsaid

**Players:** Sam, Dean, Charlie, Kevin, Emma, Jo and maybe a few more.

**Words: **lots**  
**

**Rating:** uh, what is it if there's a slight mention of boobs?

**Warning:** swearing, continuation of Dean's brand new parental crazy and everyone else's regular crazy, it's a love story baby just say yes, the occasional original character when called for and of course, The Unicorn.

**AN:** Again, in case you weren't paying attention in part one, quickreaver posted this and said WRITE THINGS and I wrote part one and then there was two and here we are. Also, I'm aware this was a Sam show, but I'm really terrible at the singular character focus thing probably because no man is an island, no show without Punch, where there is a Sam there will inevitably be a Dean at some point and all that rot. This is where Dean takes over the telling for a while to flesh out that bit between Jo's arrival and the end of part one.

**I Still Blame:** quickreaver and kettle_o_fish for this whole thing.

**penumbra**

**the things unsaid**

_Before:_

When the light fades – when they have their eyes back and can peer through the green spots dancing across their vision – the air is filled with blue and silver sparks, whirling in sky-bright dervishes across the destruction. They catch of rotting debris, and where they do small shoots spring up, pale green and yellow and startlingly clean amidst the dirt and decay.

Dean's gaze moves, helpless, to their source and feels his heart seize painfully in his chest.

_No, no, no…_

No, they never meant for this to happen, because she was supposed to be happy, and safe, and in heaven. In her heaven where her father never died and her boyfriend never left and the Devil couldn't send his dogs after her.

But instead there is a pale figure standing amidst the grime and rot and mud, facing away from him with one pink-soled foot half-lifted, as though she had been mid-step when flung down here. Her hair is a fall of pale gold and covers her from scalp to waist, showing only the lower sweep of her back and the dimples nestled like the thumbprints of God above the curve of her buttocks. Her hands hang limp at her sides, but he sees them close, open, close loosely again as she turns toward him.

Dimly he registers Kevin's sharp inhale and Sam's breathless swearing, but he can't take his eyes off her; the smooth white lines of her, pearl and gold and ivory, rosy breasts and mouth and cheekbones, and those _eyes_, eyes like new bronze and old gold that find his and _hold him_. He remembers they were darker before, like new-turned earth after rain.

Now he can only hold onto the alicorn, almost leaning on it for support and stare at her helplessly.

"Jo, I'm sorry," he says, voice near breaking. "I never wanted…"

"Dean?" she says quietly and takes a slow step towards him. She looks bemused, but unafraid, vaguely curious of her surroundings but unworried by them. "Dean."

He swallows. "I'm here."

She smiles. "You are." Then she frowns, looking down at herself. "I'm naked…" she marvels, and she is; the only thing remotely like clothing on her is a pendant on a long silver chain that hangs just below her breasts.

Dean manages to pry his hands free of the alicorn – painful, like they've seized up – and pulls off his jacket and his flannel button down. She watches him put the shirt around her shoulders and help her into the arms, buttoning it from collarbones to upper thigh while trying to brush against her skin as little as possible, not wanting to spook her – he doesn't think he's ever been so careful of touching a woman before in his life. It's so quiet he can hear the clinking of the chain around her neck as his knuckles knock against the pendant.

"That's mine, I think," she says softly, and he realizes she's looking past his left arm to the alicorn, still standing upright where he buried its tip in the dirt. She drifts past him, "Jo, wait," and when her fingers touch the alicorn's base, it's like both of them truly come alive.

Colour flushes down the alicorn the way blood spills under the skin of a pale face and _Jo's_ pale face seems to wake finally, regaining that fierce look he remembers so well, all balls and sass and take-no-prisoners.

She closes her right hand around the alicorn and slides it effortlessly from the wet soil. Daylight touches it and breaks into its simpler parts, casting rainbows across her forearm.

"Dean," Jo says.

"Yeah?"

"I'm going to need some kind of explanation. But you can give me that in the car, on the way to a hotel." She looks grim. "I need a bath."

Dean can't help the small incredulous smile. "Really?"

And then he really looks at her and sees the burgeoning pain there. He remembers what this place did to Sam when they got here, is doing to him now more than likely, and what it must be doing to her.

"Just take me someplace _clean_, please…" she breathes, and he can't deny her.

**oOoOoOo**

Sam has seen a lot of things over the past few months, but he has never seen anything quite like whatever Jo Harvelle is now.

"So, hang on," Dean is saying, and from the sound of things no doubt making _that face_ at Kevin. (Sometimes Sam privately marvels at the fact that he gets labelled as the brother who makes the bitchface when Dean has such an epic one of his own.) "So she's… She's a…"

"Unicorn," Kevin says, in the matter-of-fact tones of a man who's never uttered or heard his brother utter 'ride on silver moonbeams and shoot rainbows out of their ass' in reference to the aforementioned mythical horse. And actually:

"I thought a unicorn was a horse with a magic horn," Sam asks. "Or a…magic horse with a horn. Or something."

And now Dean is making _that face_ at him.

"Shut up," Sam mutters.

"Uh, they used to be," Kevin says, accompanied by the flicking of pages. "But y'know, they're like all the other supernatural stuff out there – the best way not to get noticed was to blend in with the biggest and most wide-spread population which is…"

"Us," Dean finishes. "Great. _Awesome_. So now we've gone and resurrected a friend – _dragged her out of her slice of heaven_ – so she can be some former-horse-shaped magical creature." He throws his hands up. "That has just _made my day_, guys."

"Hate to break it to you," Kevin says, and Sam can see him shifting uncomfortably. Kevin gives off a kind of watered down version of angel glow, the holy light seeming to steam out of him, giving the impression that there's a smouldering blue fire buried in his chest; when embarrassed the steam forms small eddies that spill off his arms and shoulders. "But this is how unicorns _happen_."

"…what?"

"They're all dead people," Kevin tells them, "every single one of them was brought back with an alicorn, like the one Sam found in the repository, and by someone who shared a bond with them in life, but wasn't related by blood. They're all people who died in supernatural circumstances, maybe before their time." He sighs. "Like it or not – it was always going to be like this. And it was always going to be her."

"Dean…?" a voice calls softly from behind the closed bathroom door.

Dean makes a small noise in the back of his throat like someone's holding a pillow over his face and Sam can only picture his brother's expression right now but he bets it's _hilarious_.

"You gonna stand there girding your loins some more or go in there?" Sam asks for the sake of expediency.

"Are you insane?" Dean hisses. "She's in the bath! I'm not going -"

"Dean?"

Sam smirks as Dean calls back:

"Coming."

And then stops smirking when Dean smacks the back of his head as he makes his way to the bathroom.

There's the sound of the door opening, and then closing.

A few moments of silence.

"I'm hungry," Kevin says.

"Me too," says Sam, snatching up his coat and tossing the prophet the keys.

"Think Dean'll mind?" Kevin asks as he catches them.

"Really don't."

**oOoOoOo**

The bathroom is strangely quiet; the only sound in the warm, wet air is the gentle chiming of bathwater against the sides of the tub and the whisper-soft shifting of bare limbs.

Dean breathes in the smell of sodden flowers and summer rain and damp heat for a second before closing the door as soundlessly as he can, leaning against it and trying not to look at the woman in the bathtub.

Which is a lost cause.

Her hair falls in a tumble of wet silk over her left shoulder, shielding her breasts from sight, though he knows with a worrying kind of certainty that they'll be flushed with heat the way her mouth is. He can see, vision suddenly telescopic, where the water is beading on the smooth curve of her shoulder and clustering her lashes together. Steam rises from the surface of the water in fragrant clouds, diffusing the soft glow she emits and turning the tiny room into a dreamscape.

Dean feels like he's slipping, like he's losing the will to look away and punish himself for thinking anything other than guilty thoughts about her. He doesn't want to want her, he didn't want her to die but she did and he doesn't want her to be here now – he wants her back in her piece of heaven, safe, content, away from their troubles.

But it's becoming increasingly clear, all over again, that what Dean wants he's not going to get.

She's here.

And looking at him, golden eyes fathoms deep.

"Hey," she murmurs, a small smile curling the left corner of her mouth. "You gonna come sit with me, or stand there looking constipated?"

Dean chokes on a laugh. "In the bath?"

"Beside the bath," she corrects, smiling in full and looking down at the water. "It got lonely in here. And I can't find the towels."

Dean edges around the side of the bathroom to avoid catching glimpses of anything and settles beside the tub, facing the same way she is. Jo looks over her shoulder at him.

"Towels?"

"Right, yeah, sure…" There's some wriggling, and he unearths them in the vanity cupboard at his back. "Here."

She puts one aside beside the tub and turns further to look at him. "I can't see you back there. Why are you hiding?"

"I'm not, I…" He trails off, inhaling sharply when she turns fully towards him. He looks up at the ceiling. "Jo…"

He can hear the smile in her voice. "Such a gentleman."

"I try," he manages, and focuses intently on a patch of black mould that is steadily turning green and appears to be flowering. This is also when he notices that the plastic plant in the tacky little hanging basket by the mirror is no longer plastic and has begun to creep across the top of the vanity, making its way around Jo's pendant that sits glimmering beside the sink. He tilts his chin at it. "That you?"

"Yes. Comes with the territory, apparently."

"Anything else we should know about?"

"Well I don't know about shitting rainbows or riding moonbeams," Jo says dryly, "but this seems to be happening a lot."

He hears her blow out a short, sharp breath, and a shower of blue and silver sparks flies up into the air over their heads. They sift down, leaving further trails of green life where they hit the walls and tiles, but all Dean can feel when they touch his skin is phantom kisses, like feathers brushing over him. He shivers, eyes slipping closed and then shooting open guiltily.

There's a sigh from the tub and then the slosh of water as Jo reaches out, fingers slipping over his cheek and turning his face towards her.

"You need to stop this," she says softly, eyes catching him again and holding him still. "Do you remember what I told you before, when Osiris had me?"

"Yeah," he says, voice barely a rasp. "You told me – told me I carried crap I didn't have to."

She smiles, rueful. "Yeah, and you argued with me, you dumbass."

Dean manages a smile back, weaker than hers. "You know me; never could back down gracefully."

"No, _that_ hasn't changed. _You_ have though, since I saw you last. You're happier." She runs the pad of her thumb over his cheekbone, very carefully. "But you have to stop this, Dean."

"Jo, I… I never meant to –"

"You can't keep looking at me like that. And not looking at me at all." She sighs again, hand slipping from his face as she stands and steps from the tub, water cascading from her skin. "It's just a body, Dean, a shape. I have others."

The humid air flickers around her – sunlight through blown leaves – and Dean scrambles to his feet to meet The Unicorn.

She stands still and watchful on hooves the colour of conch seashells, built dainty as a doe and pale as milk. The alicorn is there, spiralling like a silver sword from her forehead, just above her wide eyes, still depthless dark honey. Dean looks at her and –

"Damn," he breathes, and then freezes when she puts her teacup muzzle against his shoulder. Without thinking, he reaches up and touches one velvety cheek, combs his fingers through the creamy mane. She still smells of flowers and green, growing things, and under all the new unfamiliar things, just Jo, just herself, and he remembers it like a blow, standing so close to her in Bobby's kitchen, breathing in, and then in the hardware store, finding that scent under the blood as he kissed her goodbye…

The air shivers again and she's on two legs instead of four, his hand still in her hair and against her face. She gazes up at him from so close, smiling.

"My heaven was a beach, Dean," she says, voice low and soft and just for him, "at first it was sunny because I was happy there, I was content, but when I got lonely it started raining, thunder-storming day and night, lightning like nothing on earth. It was beautiful, but it wasn't perfect because I was there before I was ready for it."

She leans into his hand.

"I was alone there. But I'm not anymore."

He doesn't resist when she leans up to kiss him.

**oOoOoOo**

"So," Charlie says, launching herself over the back of the arm of the couch and landing beside Dean with an audible _flumph!_ "That's The Unicorn?"

Dean side-eyes her. "Did you just say it with capital letters?"

"Maybe?" Charlie's eyes are bush-baby huge and she's got that fighting-a-nerdgasm look on her face.

"…Yeah, that's her," Dean admits, letting his gaze drift from their side of the massive fire place in the leisure room to the other side of the equally massive hearth rug where Jo is making friends with Emma by teaching her _'head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes…'_

Emma hasn't quite figured out knees and shoulders, but she knows all about toes, and keeps taking off her socks to show Jo, who smiles like the sun rising. She's spun from gold, her glow almost lost in the flickering of the firelight, and the alicorn is quiescent as a pattern of shimmering coils and swirls running from her right wrist to the cap of her shoulder. In her borrowed jeans and tank top, hair fluffing a little in the dry heat, she could almost be a regular girl, instead of the personification of Sweetness and Light drawn to earth to right wrongs for puppies and rainbows and Christmas.

"She's cute," Charlie says, breaking Dean's brooding streak and reminding him and staring like a creeper doesn't earn you points in anyone's pro column outside of _Twilight_ fans. "I'd totes go there," Charlie continues mercilessly.

Dean can only stare at her.

"What?" Charlie defends, wriggling in place. "She is! The whole paragon of virtue thing is super foxy! Y'know, the all untouched, forbidden fruit –"

"Oh God, we cannot be having this conversation," Dean cuts her off, mortified. "She's ten feet away teaching my kid kindergarten songs!"

"Okay," Charlie says, attempting to sound cowed.

"And I'm reasonably sure she's not a virgin," Dean finishes grumpily and then wants to kick himself.

"Oh really?" says Charlie slyly. "And how do you know _that_?"

"Uh…"

"Da!" Emma interrupts, proving that not only is there a God but He must still be listening to at least some prayers. She barrels over to him on still slightly wobbly legs and slaps a small palm against his leg when she gets to him. "Knee!"

"Actually it's more shin, but yeah, _knee_! Good girl!" Dean tells her, shifting gears into daddy mode easy as breathing. He reaches down to steady her, and hand to either side of her ribcage, feeling the bird-quick expand and contract of her breath.

He feels more than hears Jo's approach – footfalls barely a whisper over the faded Persian carpet – but before he can do much more than look up and smile, Sam has come in with a star-struck Kevin trailing in his wake.

Dean keeps smiling right up until he sees the look on his brother's face.

"What happened?"

"Collie just swung by and apparently word on the wire is that we're cracking Hell back open –"

"Well, we kinda are," Charlie puts in.

"– Apparently Roy and Walt are still alive, and still think I'm the fount of all evil."

"Hey," Dean says, putting his hands over Emma's ears. She gives him a puzzled look then goes back to trying to enlarge the hole in the knee of his jeans.

"Which you can't possibly be," Jo says, grinning, "Because you're in the same room as me and not exploding. But then Roy and Walt aren't exactly stellar examples of um, a lot of things…"

"Hate those guys," Dean mutters sullenly. "If I ever get a hold of 'em… Long story," he adds to Charlie, who has one eyebrow up.

"Not why I'm making the face," she says. "What's up with Kev?"

Kevin still has the third-date-with-a-two-by-four look on his face. Which considering his recent encounter is entirely justified.

"Collie," he and Sam say at the same time.

"Wait," Jo says, "Colleen McEwan? The tattooist?"

"Mmm-hmm," Sam says, while Dean tries to unsee the smug look on his brother's face; Collie is responsible for the anti-possession tattoos on his chest and Sam's, but Dean also suspects that more recently she can also take credit for the Latin over Sam's hip and the spill of Celtic knot-work that covers his right shoulder-blade and spills down past the waist of his jeans.

Dean also suspects Collie used it as an excuse to get Sam out of his pants and then took full advantage of the fact.

"So Collie is…" Charlie says with renewed interest and oh, god, Dean cannot even contemplate the horror of watching his brother and his best friend and the nerdiest prophet of the Lord compete for the affections of a saucy Irish temptress, he just can't.

"Stunning," Jo says, and then rocks everyone's world with, "I mean I'm not gay, but I'd hit that. On principle."

Dean is just not coping.

"Can we focus on the matter at hand, please," he says, trying (and failing) to not sound like he's bitching. "If everyone thinks we're trying to break the pit open again we're not going to have an easy time of retrieving Little Bro Lost."

"So we'll be stealthy," Charlie puts in, throwing her arms up when Dean looks at her. "What? I can be stealthy."

"We were stealthy last time," Sam points out, "and we still got shot. I think if we want to keep assholes like Roy and Walt and any other Gordon-wannabes out there off our trail we need to either set up a hell of a lot of frame jobs."

"Time-consuming," Dean mutters.

"Or we need to distract them."

Dean frowns. "With what?"

"Oh man," Charlie says, a slow smile lighting up her face, "I just had the most awesome idea."

**oOoOoOo**

"This is your worst idea to date," Dean says. "And that includes the time we let you take in that juvenile chupacubra."

"That was not a bad idea," Charlie defends from her perch on the edge of the bridge's railing.

Dean gives her a doubtful look back and then peers down over the edge, at the murky road below. "This is how you got in last time?"

"Yeah." She slings her arm around his shoulders and puts her face against his shoulder. "Just trust me, okay? It's not like last time; I totally know what I'm doing."

Dean hugs her back and mutters, "If you die I'm getting Jo to bring you back and kick your ass."

Charlie laughs, grins up at him through a spill of sunrise hair and turns in place, swinging her legs over the railing's outer edge, into foggy space. Below, there is the faintest hiss and rush of traffic moving through the extremely low cloud that masks the valley below. The canyon's sheer walls are just visible to the west and east of them.

She looks back at him, smiles once more –

"Wish me luck."

"Luck."

– and gripping the talisman around her neck, pitches herself forward into the grey nothingness.

**oOoOoOo**

The wind roars past her, cloud parting in veils of grey and white and charcoal, getting darker and darker the further she falls. The world is getting colder, the chill seeping into her bones, and burning across her face and the thin skin of her knuckles.

Charlie grips the talisman tighter, tighter, can't let go, mustn't let go, hands going numb, can't feel them, god, oh god, oh god, OH GOD!

GOING TOO FAST –

In the murk either side of her, lightning like blue neon splits the sky in crazed patterns, engraving the dark with glowing script before wiping it clear again a heartbeat later.

GETTING TOO DARK –

Shapes swim through the cloud banks, enormous sinister silhouettes, behemoths whose groans are the grinding together of tectonic plates, birthing mountains with their voices.

CAN'T FEEL –

She gasps, the air torn from her mouth – the talisman burns inside the cocoon of her half-frozen hands – the roaring of the wind reaches a fever pitch –

And then she stops.

Hovering at a forty-five degree angle from the rocky ground, she is halted mid-air and, for the second time in her life, finds herself nearly nose to nose with a woman in a long black coat, with eyes the colour of salt caramel and cheekbones that could cut a bitch.

"Charlie," the woman says evenly, a small indulgent smile beginning at the corners of her pale mouth. "Back again I see."

"Hela, hi," Charlie chirps back. "I was hoping I could call in that favour. You know, the one you owe me?"

**oOoOoOo**

At the bottom of the canyon, Dean is leaning against the Impala with his hands shoved into his jacket pockets.

He watches the fog drift past him in unearthly twists of grey, feeling at once reassured as it begins to dissipate under the warmth of the slowly rising sun and shivering with worry for Charlie; if the fog goes before she gets here, it could be another three weeks before they see her again. It happened before, and Dean nearly went out of his mind thinking they'd gotten her killed.

"C'mon, kiddo, where are you…?" he mutters, shifting restlessly and peering into the thinning vapours.

As if in answer, there is the sound of shifting gravel somewhere to the east. Dean pushes off from the car and cautiously makes his way towards it.

There are no pre-dawn commuters, or truckers on a long haul, or exhausted road-trippers hunting for a motel to crash in. The road is deserted; even the local birds appear to have abandoned their dawn chorus, leaving behind an eerie, gasping silence that sounds drop into to rattle with unnatural volume. Dean's boots send up echoes as they scuff over the asphalt, and he has to pause every third step or so to listen for other noise.

There, again, the over-loud gravel, pebbles tumbling with the voices of boulders over the blacktop.

"Charlie…?"

He hears a sigh as his feet touch the centre of the road, and in the same moment, the sun crests the horizon. The first true fingers of daylight touch the earth, turning the fog to a fine, damp haze and throw into misty silhouette the little cross-legged figure ten feet from Dean. He can just make out the outrageous red of her hair.

"Charlie? Charlie!"

He hurries up to her, and she grins when she sees him. He laughs in relief; she looks stoned, and the grin is definitely a dopey one.

"Oh wow," she warbles, "oh dude, I'd forgotten that bit."

"Which bit?"

"The thing she can do with her tongue," Charlie says, totally without guile. "I should visit more often…"

"TMI, kiddo," Dean says, laughing again. "Hey, focus for a sec –"

"Sex!" Charlie giggles.

"_Second_, Charlie, I need you to focus for a _second_. Did she say she could do it?"

"Hmmm? Oh yeah, no, we're good. She can and will. Like a boss." She stumbles a little as Dean helps her up and slings both arms around his neck, hugging to stay upright. She giggles again. "Those goobery hunters ain't gonna know what hit 'em."

Dean grins and swings her in circle just 'cause he can. "You're the best ever, y'know that?"

Charlie hangs on for the ride and says, "Wheeeeeeeeeee, Ragnarok ho!"

**oOoOoOo**

_Now:_

Over Lebanon, Kansas, the storm begins to coil like a living thing, seething and snarling. Hunters across the continent sharpen knives, load blessed rounds into favoured firearms and pray against an end that has no intention of coming.

Jo leaves Sam smoking in the last few moments of undisturbed air and goes downstairs.

Dean has just gotten Emma down; Jo can feel her uncomplicated infant dreams beginning, and has collapsed into his own bed. Jo doesn't really need to sleep, but she'll go to him tonight and rise with him the next morning, and stand with him as they prepare to crack open the deepest reach of Hell...

…and once again, the world, and this time it's hunters, will fail to notice.

Jo smiles.

**END OF PART THE MIDDLE BIT**

**BRB, WRITING MORE AND PACKING FOR EUROPE**


End file.
